The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Green Screen
After last episode’s icy prison break, Sean and Cody go down under for Pride Month as they load up the bus for a queer road trip into the outback. In The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Australian drag queen Tick (Hugo Weaving) gets a gig to do a show in the remote outback down of Alice Springs, so he teams up with the flamboyant Felicia (Guy Pearce) and transgender widow Bernadette (Terence Stamp) to get a bus to transport them, their costumes and a giant high-heeled shoe halfway across the continent. But there’s more on the road than dust and kangaroos, as the trio...
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Runaway Train (with guest Dan Delgado)
Green Screen
Sean and Cody, back from an unplanned hiatus, are joined by The Industry podcast host Dan Delgado for a look at the rarest of birds: an actually good film from schlocky 1980s grindhouse studio Cannon Films! In Runaway Train, prison lifer Manny (Jon Voight) is joined by a whiny shoeless sidekick Buck (Eric Roberts) for a poop-scented breakout from Alaska’s most notorious hoosegow. But their brilliant escape goes terribly wrong when the engineer of the freight train they stow away on croaks from a heart attack, and no one in the entire Alaska Railroad system seems to know how to slow down the...
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Bonus: A Statement About The Show
Green Screen
We have a statement that we'd like to make to our listeners. Green Screen will soon be ending its run of regular episodes. There will be three more after this one: Runaway Train, The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and the podcast finale, Dances With Wolves. The reasons why we've made this decision are complicated and we'd like you to hear them in depth. This is why we've recorded this special bonus episode. We'll also talk about what we learned, what we got out of this experience, what we'll miss, and what we see as the contributions our show has made. This won't...
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Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World
Green Screen
Though still weary from that long train trip to the Urals last episode, Sean and Cody board a British Navy sailing ship headed around Cape Horn as they delve into this swashbuckling 2003 adventure/war film, directed by Peter Weir. In Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World, indefatigable Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) can’t think about anything except the French man-o’-war he’s chasing all over the oceans. But his best friend Maturin (Paul Bettany) is so keen on collecting bugs in the Galapagos Islands that he can barely keep his mind on his job of sawing limbs off teenage...
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Doctor Zhivago
Green Screen
Finally having returned from a double-header on Mars, Sean and Cody find themselves on the snowy steppes of Russia in the tumultuous era of the Bolshevik Revolution as they sink into this 1965 epic classic, one of the biggest blockbuster films of all time. In Doctor Zhivago, wistful sawbones and sometime poet Yuri (Omar Sharif) is living his best life with happy wifey (Geraldine Chaplin) and baby, until he suddenly gets the hots for the alluring Lara (Julie Christie) who’s married to someone else. But when the Revolution comes they’re all forced to put on red stars and salute Lenin, or at...
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The Martian
Green Screen
What, they’re still not back from Mars? Sean and Cody are on number two of a double-header (with last episode) as they take on Ridley Scott’s popular 2015 science fiction drama. In The Martian, plucky and somewhat jerky botanist astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) gets the Home Alone treatment as his shipmates accidentally leave him behind on Mars. It’ll be four years until anyone from Earth can rescue him and he’s only got 68 packets of potatoes and some freeze-dried poop. Wait, wasn’t that the plot of the last film on the show? That’s not a coincidence. Environmental issues...
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Robinson Crusoe on Mars
Green Screen
After turning themselves into cartoons last episode, Sean and Cody make a side trip to a mostly fictional version of the red planet on their way back to the real world. In the 1964 space adventure Robinson Crusoe on Mars, white bread astronaut Kit Draper (Paul Mantee) and the monkey he loves crash-land on the titular planet to find the basic tourist amenities such as oxygen, water and food haven’t been restocked in several million years. With only a mid-60s tape deck, an Air Force surplus flight suit and a couple of tubes of turkey paste, can Draper find a way to survive long enough for...
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The Congress
Green Screen
Sean and Cody exchange the gross creatures of the last episode for the dubious charms of an animated, drug-induced alternate universe as they dive into this visionary 2013 dystopian science fiction drama. In The Congress, aging Hollywood star Robin Wright, playing herself, lets a movie studio zap her into a digital clone that they can use to put her into any film for the next 20 years. When her contract is up and it’s time to renegotiate, though, she finds herself hyped on hallucinogenic drugs to join the raddest party in town, which is a freaky alternate reality that turns everyone into...
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Gremlins 2: The New Batch
Green Screen
Urban development in NYC and the pre-Presidential environmental impact of one Donald J. Trump are ready to be eaten after midnight in this bizarre 1990 fantasy.
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Orlando
Green Screen
Frost fairs on the Thames in Elizabethan England and later times are delivering the chill as we examine this quirky 1992 gender-bending, time-traveling odyssey.
info_outlineSean and Cody exchange bonny Scotland for the steamy rainforests of Honduras as they set course for this Peter Weir-directed 1986 drama, The Mosquito Coast. When insufferable motormouth and probable Libertarian kook Ally Fox (Harrison Ford) decides to move his long-suffering family (Helen Mirren, River Phoenix, Jadrien Steele et al.) to Central America to build a jumbo ice machine, Mother and the kids have little choice in the matter. But the harshness of life in the rainforest proves to be only the beginning of the family’s troubles, especially when Ally’s swelled head leads to some not-so-funny hijinx that nearly gets them all killed. Environmental issues discussed include the real-life history of the Miskitia region and its people, geothermal energy and climate change in Central America, intentional or “breakaway” communities, and our old friend the white savior complex, back for another bruising round.
In what countries are the real Mosquito Coast and why did it prove to be such a burr up the bum of the British, Spanish and Americans throughout history? Are Central Americans really sitting on a fortune in geothermal energy, as claimed in the film? What, and where, is Gaviotas and what does it have to do with this movie? Remember that time Ron Paul’s fans thought they were going to start their own town in the Texas desert where they wouldn’t have to pay taxes? Can Harrison Ford convincingly portray an abusive father? How did this picture end up being part of a big deck of role-swapping Pokemon cards involving Harrison Ford, Jack Nicholson and Burt Reynolds? Why do Peter Bogdonavich and Paul Schrader always pop up whenever anyone starts doing cinema nerd white-guy takes on the importance of movies? Have you ever heard of Ninja brand chainsaws? All these questions and more are headed upriver in this mosquito-ey episode of Green Screen.
CONTENT WARNING: this episode contains discussion of psychological and physical abuse in a family setting.
The Mosquito Coast (1986) on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091557/
The Mosquito Coast (1986) on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/film/the-mosquito-coast/
Next Movie Up: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)